My GMC Terrain has some pretty amazing headlights... they drop off right at the back window of the car ahead of me, so they don't blind the driver, and provide excellent coverage on the ground, where I need it most.

I don't have the steering headlights (I worked on some of that tech over a decade ago), but I haven't noticed much of a need. I'm also thankful for the automatic rearview mirror that dims the brights that some idiots insist on using even though they are traveling behind me coontil a bigger car passing by hits them with even brighter lights).

waterrockets:You know this is for a race car, right? Have you raced at night? Anything from running, to bicycles, to cars, lighting is extremely important, and plays a huge role in setting your top speed.

If you are racing in this vehicle at night, where there are runners, cyclists, and regular cars on the road with you, you are doing it wrong and should stick to Need For Speed on your Xbox.

I understand even a closed course has dangers, but if a deer jumps in front of you, laser-powered headlights will not really help you at 150mph.

LesserEvil:course has dangers, but if a deer jumps in front of you, laser-powered headlights will no

Lost in translation. I'm saying that racing bicycles in the dark benefits from amazing lights. I've done 24 Hours of Moab, for instance, and it doesn't take too much speed to outrun your lights if you're on a technical section. Same thing for cross country running races at night (ultramarathon type races). Motocross too, and many of those riders have used the nicer bicycle headlights because they are so much more effective than OEM headlights.

Racing Le Mans, in that car, and you will get much closer to daylight lap times if you improve lighting.

FTFA: Laser light is monochromatic, so it doesn't project across all areas of the spectrum like the light emitted from conventional sources.

the actual beam emitted by the headlights is white

Thank you Yahoo, for not understanding how the farking visual spectrum works. The blue laser being monochromatic obviously has fark-all to do with the color of the output beam created by the crystal.

/still not clear on how the whole thing is supposed to work, or how generating a laser beam to strike a target and stimulate emission of white light could be more efficient than just generating white light in the first place

waterrockets:LesserEvil: course has dangers, but if a deer jumps in front of you, laser-powered headlights will no

Lost in translation. I'm saying that racing bicycles in the dark benefits from amazing lights. I've done 24 Hours of Moab, for instance, and it doesn't take too much speed to outrun your lights if you're on a technical section. Same thing for cross country running races at night (ultramarathon type races). Motocross too, and many of those riders have used the nicer bicycle headlights because they are so much more effective than OEM headlights.

Racing Le Mans, in that car, and you will get much closer to daylight lap times if you improve lighting.

I'm not talking about street stuff, at all.

This.

It's very easy to outrun your headlights at 200+ mph on the Mulsanne straight, with the "heavy" forest air and GTs up ahead doing 55 kph slower than you, around a bend. More focused and even lighting is a major plus, alongside lumens.

/Le Mans prototypes are awesome//death of the American Le Mans series and the P1 class in NA gives me a sad

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy:still not clear on how the whole thing is supposed to work, or how generating a laser beam to strike a target and stimulate emission of white light could be more efficient than just generating white light in the first place

So... How do you go about generating white light? You could heat an wire until it glows in a part of the spectrum that's got plenty of ROY but less GBIV. Or you could start with a higher energy wave length, say the lightning bolt of UV in a florescent, and diffuse it with phosphors to produce a wide spectrum. In diode lighting I think they pump at the various spectra directly. I'm guessing their crystals diffuse and modify the wavelength at the same time, working a bit like the quantum dots I've seen here and there.

And OMFSM, there's a photonics wiki... Someplace to spend the next week since I've already finished all my xmas shipping.

wildcardjack:Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: still not clear on how the whole thing is supposed to work, or how generating a laser beam to strike a target and stimulate emission of white light could be more efficient than just generating white light in the first place

So... How do you go about generating white light? You could heat an wire until it glows in a part of the spectrum that's got plenty of ROY but less GBIV. Or you could start with a higher energy wave length, say the lightning bolt of UV in a florescent, and diffuse it with phosphors to produce a wide spectrum. In diode lighting I think they pump at the various spectra directly. I'm guessing their crystals diffuse and modify the wavelength at the same time, working a bit like the quantum dots I've seen here and there.

And OMFSM, there's a photonics wiki... Someplace to spend the next week since I've already finished all my xmas shipping.

Mostly I'm just thinking about the really poor energy efficiency of most lasers. Maybe they've got a laser technology that is more efficient at converting electricity into light than an HID headlamp is, idk. But I'm used to thinking of lasers as having a total efficiency somewhere in the range of a few percent, which would even make incandescent bulbs look favorable.